Why Marketing Quit Working (And What To Do Instead)

And we're live. How about that? Never ceases to amaze me when this stuff works. What's happening to everybody. This is your main man. Frank Kern. Hope you are well. And you know, today we're going to talk about is, um, the fact that marketing, as we know it. Has gotten way less effective and, um, what we can do about it and how to remedy this problem.
In other words, how to make marketing stuff work better. It does. And this is a big deal, I think because of a lot of reasons, but you know, obviously if we solve the marketing issue, we'll get more customers, more customers is very good. That gives us a lot of security and stability and consistency in our business, which can relieve a tremendous amount of.
Pressure and everything. And, um, if we don't figure it out and we don't make it work, then the bad stuff could happen, you know? Um, and that's no good that business could falter or whatever. So we're going to fix that. And, you know, I don't know about you, but I think we're all working way too hard to try to get customers and we're spending way too much time and effort and energy on marketing, uh, to not get the results that we want.
So you've probably noticed that it seems like it's getting harder and harder to get customers and to get attention. And there's so much noise, you know, online. And so the question becomes, what do we do about it? How do we fix it? And here's what we got to do. And this is going to sound weird. All right. We have to read our prospects minds.
Thank you. Yes, I did just say like a super weird thing, but uh, taken out of context. I know that could be weird. Obviously we can't literally be psychic and read their minds, although that would be kind of awesome, but we can come pretty close. All right. I hope I don't get my direct response history wrong.
I probably will. I'm pretty sure it was Robert Collier who was a copywriter back zillion years ago, anything over two weeks now, a Cillian years ago, by the way. And, um, he had, he said something in one of his books that like the main thing about writing. Really good copy and about. Marketing in general and getting customers is to enter the conversation in the prospect's mind.
Right. And I think it was a brilliant thing to say, because if we know what they're thinking about, then we can like address it directly. And then when you address what's on somebody's mind, you get their attention and you kind of get a pretty quick bond going there. You know, Oh, by the way, um, the, if you want to go deeper on what we're talking about today, go to the learnwithkern.com.
Don't put the www in there though, because I screwed up the domain forwarder. So if you go there and thank you to long URL on my main website, but I'll agree to no on-demand class, it takes a deeper dive into what we're talking about today, but let's get back to it. Oh. And if someone would type that in the comments for me, I'd appreciate it.
Learnwithkern.com. All right. So this whole notion of reading our prospect's mind sounds dumb. Um, it is probably impossible from a psychic telepathic point of view. That's not really my field of expertise. However, here's what we do know. All right. And so the concept here is that if we know exactly what people want and what they're thinking about, and we make everything about that, then we will stand out from the noise and the noise being traditional marketing, which is all about big promises.
Okay. So here's the thing. 21 years, I've been doing this stuff by the way, October of 2020 marked my 21st year of doing this. And, um, I lost countless 81,000 or 84,000 to paying customers. I've had just since like 2012 or something, I've looked at my most, my oldest shopping cart that I still have access to.
So these are paying customers and they've all wanted the same thing. Which is to get new customers consistently online, you know, using ads and marketing, et cetera. And what I'm sharing with you really is the distillation of working with all of those folks for all this time. And it's really been fun, but I can't really take any credit for it.
You know, I think it's just the experience and continually trying and trying and trying that's led me to what I'm sharing with you now. So here's what. I have learned along with my customers and clients as a result of a gazillion hours of, you know, obsessively thinking about this stuff, thing. Number one is that every person makes a buying decision in the same way.
So it's me. You, our neighbor, your customers, my customers doesn't matter what the business is. All right. Every human has a buying pattern and I call this the universal buying process and it's a made up term that I made up, but it sounds cool. Um, but I think it really is very accurate and it goes like this.
All right. So. Someone, you know, we're, we're bopping along or whatever. And then before we know it, something happens and we get interested in something. Right. And so that's the first phase of the buying process is we get interested. Something grabs our attention. I'm like, huh. Okay. And then we build desire for it.
All right. And so as we learn more about the thing, whatever it is, our desire builds. And then finally it builds to the point that we buy. So it's a three-step process. That's interest, desire, buy that's it. Right. And that's the whole process doesn't matter, right. It could be a restaurant, you know, we can see something, a TV, commercial we'd smell a hamburger or whatever.
Like, man, I'm interested in eating, you know, and then you go to the restaurant and you check out their menu or whatever. And you're reading the menu. I man, those pictures look pretty good. And the smell is pretty good. That builds up your desire, and then you grab a seat and you eat. And that rhyme about that.
I did that on purpose. I really all right. So that's like a super simple example. Same thing happens online, you know, so we could be just scrolling around, you know, on Facebook or whatever. And then, uh, you see a picture of something or a video or whatever it sparks your interest. Then you go to the website for the thing.
The website gives you more information and that as you are more about it and you check it out and you think about it more and more, your levels of desire go up and then you buy. Right. And so it doesn't matter. Like we, we're thinking about a house, you know, it conveniently like, Oh man, how is this pretty cool looking?
And you get interested in the house call a realtor. Realtor tells you all about the school district shows you the house, your desirability, you sign a contract on the house. Doesn't matter. I'm going to say you're the same. Everybody's the same. So if we know that right then does make sense to create our messaging.
To follow that universal buying process. So here's what we do in traditional marketing, which is we go. We, we really bypass interest altogether. We like, we go like a fraction of a second of interest straight into buy. Right. And that's what traditional marketing is. Even in direct response. It's just like, we want to get to the sale as soon as, as soon as humanly possible, you know, and as we observe the landscape and.
And all of this kind of stuff, we start to feel like we have to make bigger and bigger claims and be louder, louder, louder, just to stand out and get more outrageous. Or we try to blend in with everybody else, which makes us invisible. Right. And so we're skipping the desire part and we're not letting that human nature take its course, you know?
So the question is this right? How do you get somebody to go through all three phases? How do you get interest? How do you build desire? And then how do you lead that? Individual to a purchase. And the first thing you understand is that some purchases are going to have a longer time period between interest and buy, right?
Like that desire time period might be law. I mean, if we're thinking about, I don't know, you know, a new car for some things, it's pretty rare that you just wake up and be like, I think I'll go buy a car. You know, usually you like get interested in it. You do a little research, you test drive it. You think about it.
You go to the configurator online 7 million times. I've been doing that with a new Ford Bronco can help. Wait for the new Ford Bronco, by the way, just random redneck trivia. But you know, that's a longer desire period. And some stuff has impulsive, like a restaurant or a small purchase of a little info product, like a book or whatever, by the way, if you want a deeper dive on this, again, go to learnwithkern.com, just Ryman today.
You know, don't put the www in there because it won't work. It's a title. Learnwithkern.com into the browser and it should redirect you. To this really long web address on my main website. And there's an on demand class there that you can take that really takes you deeper and everything we're talking about.
All right. So anyway, we know this universal buying process process exists. Right? So now all the answer or the question becomes, how do we get people through it? Okay. So. Number one is we got to get the messaging. Right. All right. And this, this is critical. And when, when we're dealing with like internet people or whatever, and my company, and, you know, again, 21 years, the, um, the, uh, uh, um, Blanken the focus, the focus here is, um, Okay, here we go.
All right. I'm reading the comments. Sorry, little lady D today, the focus gets on a tactics. You know, so people are like, dude, well, how do I make this? And how do I make a webpage and all this kind of stuff? And how do I make this type of funnel or this time of process or yada, yada, yada, all of that. The secondary to the message.
All right. The message is what's going to egg and interest is what's going to be build desire and, and see it's, what's going to make the sale. If you got the right messaging, the tactical stuff doesn't really matter. So here's the thing. The messaging should be in the form of story. All right. It's not marketing story.
Okay. No marketing story. However. Not the type of stories we think. All right. So usually when you hear someone say that and you're like, Oh dude, all right, now I'm got to tell all these stories and you know, people either think, Hey, I have to make up stuff or be, I have to tell stories about me and about my product and neither one of those have any bearing on our customers.
And as the only person that matters in this equation, right. As the customer. So the story. Only has three ingredients, right? It only ever needs to be about three things here. They are, what your prospect wants, how your prospect gets it and what life will be like after they get it. And you know why it all ties back.
Into the concept of being a mind reader, which again is ridiculous, but it's pretty good clickbait, you know, but it all ties back into this concept for reading your prospect's plan, because that's all they're thinking about anyway. So if somebody wants something and they've got that interest, and now they're thinking about what's on their mind.
All right. They're thinking about, here's what I want, you know, like we've all been there about something, right? Like for me to sit down and Bronco, you want to do it for-profit is killing me. All right. It's not out yet. Go into the configurator all the time. And they're like, how am I going to get this day?
And so they're all, they're either thinking about what they want. They're thinking about how they're going to get it, or they're imagining what life is going to be like after they get it. So. There needs to be a story that it matches each of those three things. And each of those three things incidentally match the three stages of the universal buying process.
Right? When you tell a story about what the person wants, not about you, not about your product, you just bring into sharp focus. What that person wants. You get interest. All right. When you tell a story about how they get it, not a fictitious story, not a, like a dramatic story about how, you know, you were born in a, I don't know, cardboard box under a bridge.
And now you have a, what's the joke, Holly, to say a gold-plated flying Lamborghini. Like none of that's necessary, but when you tell a story about how they get what you want or what they want, you're building desire. Okay. So it doesn't feel like marketing. It's just feels like, Oh man, I mean, I'm captivated by this and I'm becoming more and more interested in the thing that I just got interested in as a result of the first story.
Right. And then finally, when you want to get a sale, you tell a story about what happens next, but there are only three ingredients to any story for customer getting what they want, how they get it, what life is like, I call it what happens next, what life is like after they get it. So when you want to turn on the sales side of things, You tell a story called a transformation story, which is about what life is like after you get the thing that you want.
So each of the story types actually matches every single phase of the universal buying process and also mirrors and talks to what your prospect is already thinking about. And when you do this, It seems to work pretty good. So if you would like to take a deeper dive on it again, go to learnwithkern.com.
Hopefully the dang webpage works. I set up a redirect and GoDaddy to some extremely long, weird web address on my main homepage. So hopefully that's propagated. Um, and if you would type in the comments are with current, I would appreciate it, but, uh, we found this helpful. And, uh, marketing man stories, not stories about us, not stories about our products.
There's about three things, three things, only what our customer wants, how our customer gets it, what their life will be like after they get it. That's the answer. It's not marketing it's stories. Y'all take it easy and go to learnwithkern.com.